I'm looking for a novel (any genre should be fine, but no non-fiction please) where the narrative spans over the course of a character's entire life or at least a great portion of it in a single book. It would be especially helpful if said character had a long and eventful life (80 years or more). Something like Interview with a Vampire, where the narrative follows the character's story rather than a character's relationship to an event(s). Please list any suggestions you may have and why. Thanks,
First book that comes to mind is Homeland by R.A. Salvatore. its the first book in the Legend of Drizzt series. It sorta fits. Because it shows the first thirty years of Drizzt's life. There are other books in the series that jump decades between chapters. Come to think of it, thirty years isn't so long in Drizzt's life span. He is a Drow and its not unheard of them living for like 700 years or so. But the entire Dark Elf Trilogy sorta follows what you are looking for. It doesn't focus on any specific event but rather the characters life and the various things he has gone through. The only problem is that its three books and not one.
The adrian mole books are good... There are about three / four books in the set but it tells you adrian's life since he was a teenager all the way to adulthood... Very funny and highly recommended
Woman of Substance - Barbra Taylor Bradford. There is one about a lady who lived in the same house from aged 6 until she was 80, name was Polly let me post and see if anyone knows it.
Well, I'm not sure how well it fits your criteria, but maybe you could check out Set This House In Order: A Romance of Souls by Matt Ruff. It centers around two separate cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which is more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) (though that's gone out the window) or even schizophrenia to the completely clueless. In one case, the character has already gone through therapy and has control over his disorder. In the other, the character has no idea what's going on, and over the course of the story you get a lot of background information on past experiences shes had with the disorder, or her childhood, when it began. Again, I'm not sure if that would be of any interest to you, but it does have a lot of information about her childhood and continues on to where she has control of the disorder. Looking at it from a more abstract view, you could say the background of the developing disorder was sort of like a birth (which they do go into detail on, in that way), and the personalities do go through their own "lives" within the mind, dealing with their own problems and deaths and enemies. I hope I didn't write too much! Sorry to inconvenience you if I did.
Well, I'm not quite sure that this fully falls into your specific request, BUT I do recommend Night by Elie Wiesel. It is about his true story of surviving the holocaust as a young boy for most of his young life in a concentration camp. He wrote two other related books, but they are both fictionally based on the same subject. Its a great read so if you can give it a try.
